Holy Week Services
April 14, Palm Sunday - services at 8 and 10:30 a.m.
April 18, Maundy Thursday - service at 7:00 p.m.
April 19, Good Friday - Stations of the Cross at 12 noon, Good Friday service and dramatic presentation "The Road to Golgotha" at 7 p.m.

An Invitation to Confession
Reconciliation of a Penitent is available at all times, but in Lent and particularly during Holy Week, it is customary for clergy to encourage interested parishioners to partake of the rite in preparation for Easter. Click here to learn more about Reconciliation of a Penitent and how you can include this rite in your Easter preparations.

Easter Day Services
Easter Day is April 21. There will be a Sunrise service at 6:30 a.m. at Hilton Pier - this will be a combined service with First United Methodist Church. (In case of rain, the sunrise service will be held at St. Andrew's) Easter services at St. Andrew's will be at 8 and 10:30 a.m.

Easter Egg Hunt
Easter morning, April 21, at 9:30 a.m. Bring a basket to collect your eggs! For all ages, tiny through tall. (In case of rain, the Easter Egg Hunt will be held in the basement classrooms.)

Special Programs During Lent

Illustrated Children's Retreat
April 6, 10 a.m. to noon
Children aged 5 to 9 with their parents are invited to An Illustrated Children's Retreat for Lent: a fun coloring event with music and art based on the Seven Last Words of Jesus. Attendance is limited to 20 children: please RSVP to the Rev. Lorna Williams, Associate Rector for Children and Youth, 757-595-0371, ext. 211. Deadline to sign up is Mar. 31.

Wednesdays in Lent
"Wednesdays in Lent" begin on March 13 and continue each Wednesday through April 17. You're invited to join us each Wednesday for all or just some of these events:

7:30 a.m. Lenten Service

8 a.m. Breakfast

11 a.m. Holy Eucharist with Healing

5:30 p.m. Lenten Series with simple supper (March 13 through April 10)

Lenten Series: Faithful to the End
Wednesdays, March 13 through April 10, 5:30 to 7 p.m. Includes a simple supper.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. In the season of Lent, we focus on our mortality. Reminded that we are frail creatures who will not live forever, we give thanks that our lives are held in the loving hands of our Creator. We are rooted in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t know when we will enter that life, but we know it is coming.

With its focus on the temporal aspect of our existence, Lent is a very appropriate time for us to think prayerfully about the ends of our earthly lives. As Christians, how we can best prepare ourselves and our loved ones for the one experience—death—that we know will happen to all of us?

This year’s Lenten offering, Faithful to the End, is a five-part series covering end-of-life topics such as Housing Options; Hospice Care and DNR Orders; Wills, Trusts, and POAs; Organ and Body Donation; and Funeral Planning. The five sessions will run on Wednesdays from March 13 through April 10, beginning with a simple soup and salad dinner at 5:30 p.m. and ending by 7 p.m.

Sunday morning Adult Forum: It's time to...
Sundays, beginning March 10 to April 14
So much of our stress and anxiety derives from our pollution of time. God has given us the gift of time, and called it holy, yet we often experience time as a curse. "It's time to..." is a new series from the Brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE), who invite us to recapture time as a gift. Join us on Sunday mornings beginning March 10 as we wrestle with questions of time and discover how to experience the joy of the present moment. Go to www.ssje.org/time to sign up for the daily videos. Each Sunday we'll talk about the prior week's videos.

Lenten resources

On a table in the Main Street Lobby you will find a variety of Lenten resources.If you have not already received one, please pick up a copy of the 2019 Lenten calendar, Anne’s Lenten gift to everyone. Lent begins on March 6, and the calendar helps us to walk through the season together. In addition to the Lenten calendar, you might find the Episcopal Relief & Development Lenten booklet, a companion resource.There are also mite boxes, which are for our Lenten sacrificial offering. These should be returned to the church on Easter Day (April 19). The offering will go to Episcopal Relief & Development.

Stations of the Cross - The Stations of the Cross depict the final hours, or Passion, of Jesus. See St. Andrew's beautiful Stations of the Cross here.

Lent Madness - from Forward Movement; this is a fun and unique Lenten program that is a great way to learn about the women and men of the Church's Calendar of Saints.

What is Lent?

Early Christians observed "a season of penitence and fasting" in preparation for the Paschal feast, or Pascha (BCP, pp. 264-265). The season now known as Lent (from an Old English word meaning "spring," the time of lengthening days) has a long history. Originally, in places where Pascha was celebrated on a Sunday, the Paschal feast followed a fast of up to two days. In the third century this fast was lengthened to six days. Eventually this fast became attached to, or overlapped, another fast of forty days, in imitation of Christ's fasting in the wilderness. The forty-day fast was especially important for converts to the faith who were preparing for baptism, and for those guilty of notorious sins who were being restored to the Christian assembly. In the western church the forty days of Lent extend from Ash Wednesday through Holy Saturday, omitting Sundays. The last three days of Lent are the sacred Triduum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Today Lent has reacquired its significance as the final preparation of adult candidates for baptism. Joining with them, all Christians are invited "to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word" (BCP, p. 265).